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Fotheringham, John Taylor

The benefits of classical
studies for the physician

Digitized by the Internet Archive

in 2007 with funding from

IVIicrosoft Corporation

http://www.archive.org/details/benefitsofclassiOOfothuoft

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THe Benefits of Classical Studies fpr ^.
tKe PHysician

Part of a Symposium on "The Humanities and the Professions."

Dk. J. T. FOTnEEINGHAM, TOEONTO.
Ill

Permit me first to congratulate myself upon the company in
which again I find myself, you teachers whose ranks I left, at
least whose particular branch of teaching I left, sixteen years
ago, though still glad to consider myself one of you both in name
and in fact. One's pleasure in his present position is not en-
hanced by the reflection that the ancient profession for which I
have the honor to speak must be content for the time with so poor
a spokesman and champion, when one's colleagues are men so
well known in their own spheres as Mr. Justice Riddell and Rev-
erend Professor MoCurdy. As that most famous and lovable
member of my profession, Sir Thos. Brown, said long ago in his
" Religio Medici,'' " Every man is not a proper champion for
truth nor fit to take up the gauntlet in the cause of verity. A
man may be in as just possession of truth as of a city and yet be
forced to surrender; it is, therefore, far better to enjoy her with
peace than to hazard her on a battle." But here there are no
battles, no ardent protagonists, no rival claims; rather a paean, a
chorus with strophe and antistrophe, in praise of the benefits to
be derived from the Greek and Latin classics by any of the
learned professions. Comparisons of course are odious, and one
would avoid belittling even by implication, if it were possible to
avoid it, other courses of preparatory study. The advantages of
the classics may be considered first in their general, and second
in their special application to medicine. Speaking first gener-
ally, physician and layman alike should avail themselves when
possible of the innocent and elevating pleasure which always
accompanies the exercise of the literary faculty. The musician,
the artist, the architect, the builder of great works, the organizer
of great deeds on the part of the army, the navy, the nation, are
here on common ground, and find in the exercise of their highest
intellectual and aesthetic faculties the most subtle and highly

sensitized forms of pleasure. As F. W. H. Myers has said:
" For myself, I am no fanatical advocate of a classical education,
a form of training whicli must needs lose its old unique position,
now that there is so much else to know. But for one small class
of students such an education still seems to me essential, for
those, namely, who desire to judge the highest poetry aright."
The antidote par excellence to carking care, to the mordant
toGth of daily professional anxiety, is the soothing balm And heal-
ing wine and oil of even ten minutes' communing with the sweet-
ness of Theocritus or Catullus, the sprightly Bohemian worldly
wisdom of Horace with his " Qui fit, Maecenas?" Or " the rise
and long roll of the Hexameter," like the roll of " the wandering
fields of barren foam " which Ulysses sailed in weary journey-
ings, or " the ringing plains of windy Troy,'' where Helen's
beauty and frailty wrought woe to men and to armies and to
nations, as so often before and since.

And apart from the satisfaction of slaking one's literary thirst
at the fountain head of classics, I venture to express a doubt
whether that thirst can be fully slaked by anyone drinking lower
down the stream, as in Shakespeare, Milton, Tennyson, or Scott,
or any other writer of one's native tongue. For felicity of
phrase and synonym, dexterity of syntactical arrangement, and
fine nuances of thought a*id sentiment, are very apt to be missed
by those who have not been drilled in the comparative anatomy
of language, with the De Amicitia, or the De Corona, or the Re-
public, or the Nicomachean Ethics, or the vivid terseness and con-
densation of Tacitus, or the silvery prolixity of Livy, as their
text-books and models. As James Russell Lowell, himself a
convincing example of the advantages of a classical training,
classically and beautifully phrased it, in an oration on the two
hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Harvard, " The garners of
Sicily are empty now, but the bees from all climes still fetch
honey from the tiny garden plot of Theocritus. On a map of the
world you may cover Judea with your thumb, Athens with your
finger-tip, and neither of them figures in the Prices-Current, but
they still lord it in the thought and action of every civilized man.''

Speaking now of the more special need which the trained
physician has of the Classics, one would refer first to their value
as mental gymnastics, secondly to their indispensability in the
matter of scientific nomenclature and classification, thirdly to their

3

influence not on mental habits alone but on character and
disposition, particularly in the development of a wise and
judicious conservatism and of a kindly Bohemianism, a willing-
ness to be, as the diplomat and the physician must alike be, " all
things to all men."

First, then, as to the value of the classics as mental gymnastics.
I assume that it is the boy and not the young man who is to go
through this gymnastic course, in which the various intellectual
powers find fitting exercise, and in the order of their embryonic
development, memory, reflection, the hardening of the will into
habits of industry application, accuracy^ verbatim and litera-
tim, being all duly cultivated, and cultivated in proper develop-
mental order. I cannot refrain, gentlemen, from the expression
here, as a digression, of my positive opinion — bom some may say
of the conservatism which unwisely asks, " What is the cause that
the former days were better than these ?" — that some modem
educationists are in error in their search for a Royal Road to
learning, and are spending in this search an energy which would
carry them more directly to the goal if they faced and accepted
difficulty in the good old direct way. They seem also with all
their pedagogical improvements and child study to have ended
up, if one can judge from what he sees of school-children nowa-
days, in a very serious neglect of the primordial order of develop-
ment of the faculties of the human mind. The attempt is con-
stantly being made to convert into a thinking machine by means
of mathematics that which should be not a conceiving but a per-
ceiving and registering and memorizing machine. So that at the
age when subjects and books should be few, and memory should
be in process of cultivation, with models of literary excellence
studied and stowed away for future imitation and enjoyment,
and the perceptive faculties duly awakened, the attempt is made
to make the child the father of the man without due periods of
puberty and adolescence, a system which is at least in large part
to blame for the shallow superficial Philistinism and pseudo-cul-
ture of the present day. The teaching profession is not wholly
to blame for this state of affairs. The printing press must bear
its share. About 1630 Sir Thos. Brown wrote thus: "It ia
not a melancholy wish of my own, but the Desires of better heads,
that there were a general Synod; not to unite the incompatible
Difference of Religion, but for the benefit of Learning, to recover

it as it lay at first, in a few and solid Authors ; and to condemn to
the Fire those swarms and millions of Rhapsodies begotten only to
distract and abuse the weaker Judgments of Scholars, and to main-
tain the Trade and Mystery of Typographers." What oould the
dear philosopher and physician say nowadays of the fliegende blat-
ter of the press, which blow into our houses on every passing breeze
from Sunday-school library and newstand alike, in at one ear,
out at the other, skimmed over, not read but glanced through
wrong end first; leaving superficiality, inaccuracy, philistinism
in their wake, if nothing worse. May I venture to beg your pro-
fession to come fully to the consciousness that you are our bul-
wark against this tide, and should help powerfully in the creation'
of a proper public opinion in the matter? The boy who can be
shown the depth and purity and condensation of literary interest
and style to be found in the Greek and Latin writings, can be
fully trusted not to wander far if once he can be carried past the
drudgery of the early years, and it should be clearly understood
that this drudgery is not only a means but an end; a means
whereby the later pleasant fruition of scholarship and literary
pleasure and polish may be attained ; but an end, as indicated in
my first sub-head, as gymnastics for the mind. One need not try-
to go again over ground so familiar to us all.

As to my second sub-head, the necessity of the classics as a
source of nomenclature in all branches of scientific study, one
need not enlarge here. Without an enormous medical dictionary
as his life-preserver the medical student of to-day is floundering
and wallowing in a sea of terminology, mostly to be got up vi et
armis by the belated and laborious exercise of that faculty of
memory which he should have had trained with mucli greater
facility at a much earlier date on the roots which he now fails to
recognize in their new combination, which therefore have no
pictorial value to him. One example will sufiice. The sperm
whale, of course, " blows '' when he comes up to breathe. His
huge head constitutes nearly one-third of his enormous bulk.
Hence to the well-trained naturalist who first named him, he was
Physeter Macrocephalus. What possible significance can the
name have to the 'student who was permitted carefully to exclude
Latin, and Greek so many times the more, in selecting his optional
preparatory course ? He cannot even see the point when for

mnemonic reasons it is translated for him " Big-headed Blow-
hard." But besides this, he probably lacks the mental punctilio,
which admittedly if carried too far becomes pedantry, but which
always characterizes the finished product in educational matters,
and which all must admit is not the usual result of a bare training
in the sciences.

My third sub-head had reference to the influence of the classics
not on mental habits but on character and disposition, as required
of the physician by his patients. The two outstanding traits in
my judgment, to fit the physician for his duty towards the multi-
farious types of humanity whom he must study and conciliate, are
conservatism of opinion and tempered Bohemianism of disposi-
tion;

As to the first of these, one may remind yoii that the famous
lexicographer once said to Boswell, " In my opinion, sir, every
sick man is a villain !'' By this he doubtless meant that as self-
preservation is the first law of l^ature, the sick one and his friends
in their fear of death drop from them any acquired veneer of
manner or restraint, and appear naked as they are, the courageous,
good and thoughtful patient remaining so to the last, and those
who are only outwardly in possession of these traits being deserted
by them when the pinch of fear comes. Be that as it may, no
sick one desires to be experimented on vvith drugs or other meas-
ures untried before, and no careful physician will venture to use
on his own cases new and untried remedies, however willing he
may be to accept results with new remedies well accredited by
laboratory experiments or in other men's practice. Josh Billings,
you know, once announced that he had discovered the best place
for a boil, viz., on some other fellow.

This is part of the wholesome conservatism which, while it has
probably at times delayed advance in the healing art, and even
led to such sad examples of the Odium Medicum as that which
attached to pioneers like Harvey, with the Circulation of the
Blood, and Jenner with Vaccination, has undoubtedly been for
the good of the sick in all ages. This type of mind is, I believe,
most effectively induced by classical study, with its prevailing
influence towards what is old and good and beautiful. This was
the reason which induced the Czar of Russia to order a few years
ago a great extension of the study of classics in the universities

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of the Empire. He thought, mistakenly, if one may judge by
subsequent events, that men trained thus would be less radical and
reforming in their notions. The probability is that a second and
smaller Renaissance has gone on in Russia as a result, as it did
in its time in all the other parts of Europe, and that the conserv-
ing and unradical influence of classical study can remain unim-
peached. I venture, too, to say that in my judgment there is not
a mere coincidence, but a direct causal connection, between the
advent of modern scientific medicine with its laboratory and test-
tube methods, " made in Germany '' largely, and popular thera-
peutic aberrations, such as Christian Science and the " irregular "
methods of treatment. The people love a thaumaturgist, they
will have a " priest-physician,'' it is a primordial need, for sound-
ness of soul and mind depends so largely upon sound-
ness of body, and vice-versa, and the need of moral support is
often even more keenly felt by the sick than that of physical heal-
ing. The older type of physician with the conservatism and
kindliness born of a less purely scientific training, possibly met
this need of the people more fully than the newer type whose
training, at any rate till mellowed by contact with the sick, leads
him perhaps at times to treat the disease rather than the patient.

How very conservative the profession is to which I belong a
single example will sufiice to show. The cross on the tail of the
capital Ijt which heads each prescription we. write is a survival
of the capital D from Dia, the vocative case of Zeus, and is really
the prayer with which the Greek priest-physician invoked the aid
of Jupiter and his blessing on the means employed. You will
recollect the use made of this by Charles Reade in his " Very
Hard Cash," in which the heroine, being in love, is brought up
to London by her mother, who has not guessed her real ailment, to
see the physicians, and they all with one consent cry, " Oh, Jupi-
ter, aid us ! Blue Pill and Black Draught."

Finally, as to the Bohemianism to which I have referred. The
term is perhaps too strong. I mean at least that it be well con-
trolled, usually latent, available only on occasion when some
scarred or blunted nature can be tempted into confidence only by
a bait whose colors are familiar to him. This quality of mind
must be well tempered by that dash of Puritanism and strength
without which the Bohemian may condescend to deeper than

human depths. Where can one better learn this kind of worldly
wisdom, this discriminating sympathetic knowledge of human
nature, than from the literature of Greece and Rome? For in-
stance, " De gustibus non est disputandum,'' or, as Abraham Lin-
coln put it, " Well, for people that like that sort of thing, that
must be the sort of thing they like." How many times I have
thought of this when, after my best efforts at concealing an un-
palatable dose let us say by peppermint, I have been met next
morning by the cry, " O Doctor, what a horrid medicine you left
me ! Why did you put peppermint in it ?'' This disposition to give
and take, so necessary to all who would maintain confidential re-
lations with the public does not commonly reside in the mere
Puritan.

I well remember President Hutton, of the University here, telling
us in one of the Saturday lectures that the best possible historical
study for the politician of to-day is that of the Greek republics,
the springs and motives of human action remaining unchanged
throughout the centuries, and evolution in her course leaving
human nature, like the rocks, much as she finds it. If Pope's
line be true that " the proper study of mankind is man,'' where
can one better go than to the humane and human Greek to study
him ? Sophocles makes his chorus sing, " Many marvels are there,
but nothing more marvellous than man himself." The very
anthropomorphism of the Greek mythology and religion fosters
the graceful Bohemianism which I have in mind.

It would seem odd to conclude my remarks without an allusion
to classical medicine. The debt which the medicine of to-day
owes to the ancient Greek seems to grow less as our knowledge
widens of Nature and her processes and laws, and as the purely
scientific crowds out the clinical and the empiric in the Healing
Art. But for the first fifteen centuries of our era all that the
world knew of value in medicine was Greek, buried and lost to
Christendom in the blight of the Dark Ages till brought again
to light in the Arabian translations, which were for centuries the
text-books for instance in the great and prosperous University of
Baghdad, and others of the Far East. Here, in the 8th and 9th
centuries particularly, the light was kept burning for hundreds
of students which had been kindled centuries before Christ on the
altars of Apollo and Asclepias. And of all the long line of

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•Asclepiadae from that day to this no name shines brighter,
ancient or modern, than that of Hippocrates, the model physician,
the Father of Medicine, Ancient and Modern, with his matchless
aphorisms, and his oath of professional fealty and obligation,
still a model of all that is high-minded and self-obliterating in
him whose life work is the caring for his sick and miserable fel-
lows. It would almost seem that no physician could reach his
best development who has not at some time come under the spell
of the people and the art and the literature that bred Hippocrates,
and who cannot with these as part of his experience say of him-
self, as Tennyson makes Ulysses say : " I am a part of all that T
have met.''

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